I've Moved!

Just in case some of you may not have noticed, you should check out www.hegemommy.com.  Yeah.  The big time.

From Player to Coach, and a Feminist All Along

I've mentioned in past posts the impact competitive athletics has had on my development, both as a woman and as a mother.  Long before I had my son I knew that if I ever became a parent I wanted my son or daughter to watch me play soccer.  Once my son was born that wish became a feminist imperative- he MUST watch me play soccer because my son was going to have a gender-neutral default when imagining athletes.  He was going to grow up watching women in competitive athletics and not think once that this was the "girls team" or a "girls sport."  For my son, athletics was going to start un-gendered and my identity as mother and athlete was a critical piece of that parenting.

That was until, after over twenty years of competitive athletics my body just kind of gave up.  It took me days to recover from a recreational soccer game, and that was after taking two Alleve pre-game to battle the ache I knew was coming.  I was showing up to work with bruises and scabs and deflecting questions about the stability and safety of my home-life as a result.  After one game where the back of a defender's head collided with my face, leaving me with a bloody nose and black eyes, I found myself thinking not about the shooting pain in my face, but whether I had enough makeup at home to cover the injury in time for the deposition I had to take the next day.  Yup.  It was time.  Despite all my feminist longings and love for the game, it was time to hang up my cleats.  

This was a decision I agonized over.  My son had made it to a couple of my games, but was far too young to remember them, let alone develop any foundation for processing my own feminist agenda.  Soccer had been a part of my life since I was six years old.  The only time I didn't play was to recover from injury, after a move, or at about month five in my pregnancy when my swelling belly made sprinting to the goal a comical and potentially injurious situation.  Soccer was more than just a sport.  Soccer was my sport.  Soccer was me.

Well, it's been almost two full years since I played my last game.  To this day the smell of freshly cut grass, the look of a late summer sunset, and early Saturday mornings all bring me back to the field.  Without fail I imagine shots on goal as I struggle to complete a neighborhood run.  Even after two years I default to competing on the field.

Just this month my son asked if he could play soccer.  Despite my obsession with the game I wanted him to bring up the possibility of playing rather than just signing him up with a team.  Of course I said yes, and of course I signed him up right away.  During the registration I was asked if I had any experience with the sport and if I had any interest in coaching.  I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

I may not be able to shape my son to see athletics in gender neutral terms by having him cheer for my team, but I may be able to by coaching him and an entire team full of little boys.  They'll have to take direction from a mom on something other than homework, housework, and manners.  They'll run with me, watch as I demonstrate drills, and get used to being told how to compete from a woman.  They'll watch as I deal with difficult parents and take on lazy referees.

I'm sure the gulf between reality and my expectations is wide, and I realize that one coach alone cannot defeat an army of gendered images of athletes.  But one coach is a start, just as one player is a start.  The season gets underway in May.  I'll be sure and keep you posted.

Family Planning, American Style

I don't think I'm going to have another child.  I'm not totally sure how I feel about that just yet, but I will tell you that it's a decision that I've discussed extensively with my husband and our insurance company.  That's right.  Not my general practitioner, our pediatrician, or my ob/gyn.  Our insurance company.

Like so many people right now, the decision to have a second child is as much about whether or not we could afford another kid.  This conversation has raised an issue I haven't thought about in years: ohgod what would we do if I got pregnant?

Let me be clear.  I love being a mother, even all the pain in the ass parts like not going to see music like I used to, rolling the dice every night for a full-night's sleep, all of it.  Without my son there would be no Hegemommy.  But, for the first time in at least a decade, the theoretical possibility of abortion has entered my universe.  Even typing that feels surreal.  

Abortion is an issue that makes me exceptionally uncomfortable, one that I've refrained from writing about on this site and in my other work.  I hate the tired rhetoric from both camps but I don't see a clear resolution of the issue.  Yet I am firmly pro-choice, and my current situation is exactly why.  It's a topic that just plain sucks.

The reality is that the tipping point in the decision to expand our family is cost: cost of pregnancy/delivery, cost of raising another child, and cost to the family we've already built.  As much as we hate money to be the driving factor of the analysis, it is.  The hospital bill for a second child would be around $20,000, and that is AFTER our $5800 deductible and the $600/month premium payments.  Putting another child in day care would increase our childcare costs to approximately $3000/month.  Those costs don't even factor in any loss of my income, even temporarily.  When we started to do the math the numbers simply stunned us. 

But, despite those numbers, we were bound and determined NOT to have this decision essentially taken out of our hands or come down to counting beans.  So, we did the responsible thing and started shopping around for additional insurance and considering alternatives to our current childcare situation.  Thankfully for us the childcare situation was an easier work-around now that I'm essentially self-employed.  At the very least, it looked like we had options. 

Not so for insurance.  Since I'm a member of the bar association my family and I qualify for insurance through that membership.  At first this looked like a real possibility, and I thought that, should we decide to have a second child, we had gotten our ducks in a row and could pull it off financially.  That was until the agent asked us directly  if we planned on having other kid.  I stalled because, well, I didn't have a good answer to that question.  At the time we were neither planning to or not, we were just figuring out the possibility of it all.  It seemed to me the reasonable, and indeed responsible way to go about family planning, especially in a recession.

Unfortunately our responsibility was met with the news that only some insurance plans would cover pregnancy/childbirth, and those that do have an 18 month waiting period to get pregnant- not have a child- but conceive a child.  Did I want a toddler in my early 40's?  Would that even be healthy?  My son would be almost 8 years older than his sibling by the time s/he was born.  When we imagined our family expanding this was not at all the picture we had in mind.

Here's the real crime.  If those costs did not exist, I would not be writing this post.  I'm not saying we would have committed to having a second child, I'm just saying that the possibility of pregnancy would not induce a panic attack.  If the costs weren't there an accidental conception would simply be a surprise.  We hear that millions of Americans, even those with health insurance, are one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, and here's why.  

If we keep our current coverage, we cannot afford the bills related to pregnancy and delivery.  If we switch coverage we will be older than either my husband and I are comfortable with when we finally do have a second child.  The insurance company wielded more authority in this decision than my ob/gyn and essentially forced the decision on my family before we were ready.  To the extent the pro-choice community advocates for all issues surrounding women's health, they need to fight harder, shout louder, about the cost and restriction women face surrounding health coverage.  And perhaps if the anti-choice community wants to make real headway in bringing down the total number of abortions they could use the power of their constituency to tackle the causes of abortion and fight for seamless, affordable health care related to pregnancy and deliver.  Far more often than not those causes are not drug addiction, one-night stands, or callous irresponsibility.  Quite the opposite, in fact.    

So Many New Beginnings!

Hi folks- amazing that it has been exactly one month since I promised you an update, more posts, yada, yada, yada.  Well, I have a good excuse, and one that is sure to benefit those who find Hegemommy a nice distraction.  I have been picked up as a contributing blogger here.  Yeah for paid writing work!

So, you can find me yammering about civil rights every Monday and Wednesday.  That is good news on so many fronts.  First, it helps me focus Hegemommy.  As you can see the last couple months were overrun with political posts- which is fine, except that it took me away from the "mommy" in Hegemommy.  That will change.  Second, it forces me to write even more, which leads to me wanting to write even more, which leads to more posts- you see where this is going.  Third, it is just plain cool to start the year off on the right foot with a paid gig.  So yeah.  Cool stuff.

Thanks for sticking with me as Hegemommy finds her legs.  And check me and the other talented bloggers out at care2.com.  It's a great site, full of ways to get involved in those things globally or locally.  Feel free to leave suggestions for posts or comment on the current ones.

Hats off to 2009!

Happy New Year!

Hi Folks-

I know it's been a while.  Sorry for that.  I've been spending the past month gearing up for some new teaching gigs, working on some other writing projects, and spending plenty of time collecting material for this blog.  Unfortunately in the short-term Hegemommy got a little sidetracked.

So, for the couple of you that check in with me occasionally, I hope you all have a healthy and happy 2009.  I can't wait to discuss with you the Obama administration, raising my boy in the shadow of my own feminism, competitive athletics, lady mags, parasitic personal influences, and all those spaces where the personal is political and the political is personal.  I've amassed quite a bit of material that I'm anxious to unload for you all.  So, thanks for checking in.  You've made 2008 quite a big year for me personally and I'm anxious to return the favor.

See you in '09!

Hegemommy

So Obama's Wordsmith Copped a Feel on Hillary.....

Well on a cardboard cutout of her anyways.  This story is a little old, but in case you are confused, here's a link discussing the event.  

You can see that this Facebook post (in case you didn't believe me that this would be the Generation X Administration, well, I submit the fact that we are even discussing a staffer's picture on Facebook as Exhibit A) has caused quite a stir in the feminist blogosphere.  I've withheld posting on the topic because, quite frankly, I'm still not sure where I fall on the outrage scale.

Without a doubt that picture makes Jon Favreau look like a tool.  But, um, it's a cardboard cutout for chrissakes, not some drunken co-ed he's fondling.  And I think that the Hillary camp handled the event with the grace and class that we have come to know from her (and you have to imagine at this point the woman is sick to death of hyperbole-driven sex scandals).  At the same time, I totally agree with Bartow that the media is wrong in driving a "boys will be boys" narrative to explain away the picture even if I do think the feminist response is a little over-the-top here. But surprise surprise, I'm interested in the story that the feminists seem to skip over-- that is the continuing and evolving narrative of Hillary Clinton's sexuality.

Remember when Hillary Clinton showed a hint of decolletage?  That scuttlebutt was all about how she was backing away from a carefully crafted persona of asexuality to make herself more appealing to hot-blooded American voters.  Before that, remember the lesbian rumors?  Those, it would seem to be, were also politically calculated stories designed to stir the lust of the far right.  Very different stories, identical agendas.  Use female sexuality to drive desire and hope that desire drives the voter to the polls.  

What is inescapable, and what I have yet to hear from the other feminists, is that fusion of power and sexuality for political gain- anyone's political gain.

At the end of the day I guess I'm happy that this story has been relegated to the collective eye-roll it deserves, but I do wish we could springboard it into a larger conversation about women, power, and sexuality, because that to me is the real story here-- not some picture of some frat boy acting like a frat boy.

Have We Feminized the State Department?

When news broke that President-Elect Barack Obama planned to nominate Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, analysts instantly latched on to the tired narrative of the Obama/Clinton primary wars while simultaneously wondering what kind of damage, or assistance, Bill would bring to the nomination process.  What has been missing in the dissection of the Clinton nomination is to what extent her gender may have played a role in her nomination.  For all the talk of gendered politics in the election season, I'm a bit surprised by the silence on this point now.

Assuming Clinton gets confirmed for the post, and that is a pretty safe assumption, then three of the last four Secretaries of State have been women with Colin Powell the lone exception.  The Secretary of State, in partnership with the Secretary of Defense, coordinates the execution of American foreign policy.  Importantly, the Secretary of State is the "face" of US foreign policy, the lead diplomat and the go-to person for US foreign interests.  

Now, Clinton is no doubt a good choice for this role-- she is the ultimate pragmatist and an outstanding advocate.  She will push the Obama Administration's foreign policy with grace and zeal.  She brings instant credibility and a hawkishness that should appease some of the more centrist of the Obama constituency.  As a Senator she's proven she can craft compromises and get things done.  All of those accomplishments would also make Clinton an excellent Secretary of Defense, but that possibility, or the possibility of any woman taking the reigns at Defense, is apparently non-existent.  Why is that?

I can't help but think we've developed a gendered default for the roles of Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.  The skills that make one a good diplomat seem to skew female and may inform our presumptions about who would be a good fit more than we realize.  Clearly this country is comfortable with a woman as it's lead diplomat, but I wonder when it will be comfortable with a woman in charge of it's armed forces?